The sense of resignation in “Future Man” and the notes of synthy maybe-string sounds in mourning for humanity’s decline are likewise quaint and prescient in hindsight, released as the track was on 2015’s Melk en Honing by San Diego-based industrialist Tristan Shone, otherwise known as Author & Punisher. For in the years that would follow, the species would become increasingly screwed, but, you know, there’s probably no way Shone could’ve known that unless he read the news or a book or whatever. Perish the thought.

Author & Punisher released Melk en Honing through Housecore Records, the imprint owned by Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Down, Superjoint Ritual, etc., who also co-produced. And I don’t know, there might be some uncredited backing vocals in there, maybe in “Disparate” — after the Seals & Croft reference; “Summer breeze makes me feel…” — in the spoken part? Mumbling something on mic in the drawdown of “Callous and Hoof?” Whatever.

Comprised of eight songs running a CD-era-esque 53 minutes, Melk en Honing — ‘milk and honey’ in Dutch — followed two full-lengths through Seventh Rule Recordings in 2012’s Ursus Americanus and 2013’s Women and Children, and both were crucial to the development of the project after 2010’s Drone Machines began the turn from earlier dub outings toward the industrial doom sound Shone would gradually refine. And, with Melk en Honing, whether it’s the frenetic post-intro-drone verse of “Callous and Hoof” or the drawn-out lumbering stretch in the song’s second half, whether it’s the “The Barge” pounding its beat like the rhythm of a boatman’s oars or the gnashing, still somehow hooky affirmation in closer “Void, Null, Alive,” the idea throughout is clearly impact.

Sure enough, the songs hit clearer than, say, “Flesh Ants” from Ursus Americanus and push the vocals forward in a way that Author & Punisher would continue to develop as the production grew more expansive, first across 2018’s Beastland (discussed here) and then through 2022’s Krüller (review here), the latter of which brought a melodic focus that seems extrapolated in part from what’s happening in a song like “Shame” or “Void, Null, Alive” here, where Beastland — the band’s first album through Relapse — brought harsher fare on average.

Melk en Honing has a balance, and because Shone‘s approach is streamlined, the shifts between melody and dissonance, that extra bit of crush that Author & Punisher beats offer that no one else in the modern industrial set — all those bands with numbers in the names and the ones with the punk rock logos — has been able to match, and the impression of breadth all shine through the recording. It’s raw in the sense of trying to bring a notion of organic performance to a sound that is inherently programmed. Doing that, you’re going to lean a lot on vocals, and Author & Punisher does.

But the songs stand up to that as well. Yes, there are the various boops and blips, likely homemade samples and manipulations set to apocalyptically heavy purposes, the churn of time’s gears grinding through our mortality and all sorts of other flowery hyperbole for a sound so wrenchingly cathartic. Given whatever volume can be spared, “The Barge” — only it and “Disparate” top eight minutes; Shone‘s background in doom showing itself in starting with a longer track — is sharp corners and hard edges, pummeling with a chant droning behind as it plods its relatively simple but almost universal rhythm, but it’s also catchy. Amid all the screams and slow march, it’s got a hook. So does “Cauterize,” “Shame,” “Future Man,” “Disparate,” “Callous and Hoof,” “Teething” and “Void, Null, Alive,” which if you’re keeping track at home, is all of them.

Those take different forms. In “Disparate,” it’s the ultra-weighted delivery late of the title-lyric. In “Callous and Hoof,” it’s the spoken part after the initial frenzied bounce. In “Teething,” it’s the line “Straight like teeth, like making love.” Sometimes it’s a chorus or sometimes it’s just another part put in, but there’s something to grab the listener throughout, so that as much as Melk en Honing can be the concrete-toned onslaught of machine music that it is, it’s also a collection of composed, thought-out songs — literally, they not only had to be thought of or written, but programmed out ahead of time — with a mindful execution and arrangement. Many of the verse lines are short, straightforward in language if not necessarily always the idea behind it, and feel born out of the music, though the play between “callous” and “chaos” in “Callous and Hoof” is a more purely linguistic nuance, and not at all the only one, so lyrics are not to be considered an afterthought. They’re essential, here and elsewhere in Author & Punisher‘s catalog. And even if “I’m not looking for madness/But it’s found” is a little awkward in the phrasing in “Cauterize,” it’s all a work in progress.

To that, Author & Punisher‘s seemingly ongoing evolution is fascinating in part because it includes new sounds. When a band grows, it’s not like they invent a new guitar. And to my knowledge, Shone isn’t writing software — though he builds his own hardware, which you can read about a lot on the internet — but between the two albums before and the two that have thus-far followed, Melk en Honing introduces concepts and actual sounds that broaden the scope of Author & Punisher, and while that’s gone on since, this was the pinnacle of Shone‘s progression at the time and comes across like someone who’s spent the better part of the decade prior exploring and finding his aesthetic and is ready accordingly to reach out to an audience waiting to find him. He’d already toured hard by 2015, but certainly that ethic hasn’t abated in the years since (2020-2021 notwithstanding).

I don’t know what Author & Punisher — which in addition to Shone now includes Ecstatic Vision‘s Doug Sabolik on human-guitar — have planned for 2024. I don’t even know what kind of sandwich they want from the deli; I’m winging it here. But they had a sale on merch recently and I get the emails about that kind of thing, and well, sometimes just seeing a name is enough to make you want to listen to a thing. As always, I hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

—

Decided I’m going to leave the Quarterly Review where it is for the time being. This one was actually pretty easy to put together and to write, and after the last one ended with a what-have-I-done-with-my-life existential crisis, I’m going to let myself be satisfied with the 50 records covered and pick up either next month or in January. Still a ton of stuff from 2023 to cover — I’ll get you yet, Dun Ringill — and still more on the way.

I think I might be streaming the Mars Red Sky album next Thursday. Look for a review either way. Lamp of the Universe too, and there was a four-way split on Totem Cat I want to write about, then not a ton else is imperative before the year-end coverage starts, which will take a few days on the back end. It’s always a while putting lists together and such. I have a file I’ve started. I’ll get there. We do this every year.

And to that end, thanks if you’ve contributed to the year-end poll. Things are taking shape.

That’s it for me. Week was a week, but I didn’t have to go pick up The Pecan at school for beating anybody and she’s got her ADHD meds patch now so I guess we’re proceeding. Not calling “out of woods” at this point in terms of behavior, but a couple smoother weeks on either side of the Thanksgiving holiday have been easier to live through.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’m gonna go hit Costco in a bit with The Patient Mrs., then look forward to an early start for a hopefully mellow-ish weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate. All that important stuff. See you back here on Monday.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Tags: Author and Punisher, Author and Punisher Melk en Honing, California, Housecore Records, Melk en Honing, San Diego

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2023 at 11:41 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.